Fall from Grace

by Wayne Arthurson

  “So you stayed home, while she went to work?”

  “Yeah, she wanted to stay home, feed me soup and shit like that. She was always doing shit like that, but like I said, rent was due so I told her she had to go to fucking work ’cause I couldn’t.”

  “So she left and that was the last time you saw her. Did she say anything?”

  She nodded, but said nothing at first. Tears finally appeared and her eyes turned misty. She choked back a sob or two. “She said she’d be back in a couple of hours.”

  “But she didn’t come back, right?” It was an obvious question, but I was looking for a reaction.

  “Nope,” she whispered, the tears now flowing down her face.

  “Did you report her missing?”

  Despite her tears, she laughed. “Yeah, right. What good would that do? Nobody gives a shit about a missing hooker.” She looked at me for a second and then nodded her head. “Especially you cops, because it makes things easier for you. Just one less street worker you have to worry about, right?”

  And she was right. Every year, hundreds of women like Grace were reported missing and nothing happened. If she was white and not a sex trade worker, not someone with a “high-risk lifestyle,” there would be a major search, front-page coverage, television vans stationed outside her home, helicopters provided by the army to aid in the search, and pleas from police for tips. And if she was found dead, no effort would be spared, no stone left unturned, to find her killer.

  But for Grace and the others like her, nothing happened when they were reported missing, because prostitutes went missing for a number of reasons and not all of them grim. And if a missing prostitute was found murdered, the investigation was usually perfunctory when compared to one involving a “regular” citizen. Once it was declared unsolved, it was filed on another list that no one really looked at because we are probably all scared by the number of woman on that list. Or we don’t really care because it was just another dead Indian hooker that got what she deserved because of her choice of career.

  In order to not feel overwhelmed by the hopelessness of it all, I returned to my line of questioning. “So she said nothing else when she left?”

  “Nope, nothing else.”

  “Did you say anything?”

  “I told her what I always told her when she left,” she said, choking back sobs. “I … I told her to be careful. To stay away from the yellow pickup.”

  My heart jumped at the sound of the words. Yellow pickup. That was the second time I’d heard that. “What does that mean?”

  “Yellow pickup?”

  “Yeah, stay away from the yellow pickup. I’ve heard that before. What does that mean?”

  Jackie shrugged “It’s just something we tell each other, like don’t eat yellow snow, stay away from the yellow pickup.”

  “Yeah, but why? Why should you stay away from the yellow pickup?”

  Jackie said nothing but she bent over, rolled up her right pant leg, and showed me a mass of scar tissue on her knee. “About a year or so ago, I get into a yellow pickup, seemed like a decent guy, nice smile and friendly. Old guy, you know, a bit of gray hair, older than you but okay looking. I don’t know why he’s picking me up, but I figure, what the hell, a john’s a john, don’t question, just do the fucking job.

  “So we get a few blocks away and he grabs my arm, not in a nice, ‘hey, let’s fuck’ kind of way, but in a ‘you’re not getting out of this truck and there’s nothing you can do about it’ kind of way. So I jabbed him in the eye with my fucking finger, and when he lets go, even though the truck’s still doing about fifty, I opened the door and jumped out, fucking up my knee.

  “Grace wanted me to go to the hospital but I said, ‘No fucking way,’ they’d just want to know why and call the cops. It bled for a day or so but then it stopped and I kept a bandage on it for weeks and it fixed itself up all right after a while. It looks bad but it’s okay. But that’s when we came up with, Stay away from the yellow pickup. It means just that, but it also became our way of saying, Be careful.”

  “So you think she got into a yellow pickup?”

  “Yeah, maybe, but what difference does it make? She’s still dead, right?”

  I nodded and decided that I could no longer keep track of her comments, and slowly pulled out my notebook. But she didn’t really see me. She was probably realizing that she was lucky not to have ended up in a farmer’s field and then starting to feel bad that her friend did.

  “So can you describe what this guy looked like, the one driving the yellow pickup?”

  It took her a few seconds to come back and then she shrugged. “Yeah, sure, but will it make any difference?”

  “It might,” I say. “It might, but to be honest I really don’t know.”

  She nodded, agreeing, but before she did, she saw the notebook. “Hey, you’re not a fucking cop, are you?” Jackie said. I looked up from my notebook and saw her staring at me, her face impassive, despite the tears.

  “No. I’m not,” I said. And then I told her who I was and what I was doing.

  “Jesus fuck piece of shit.” I was unsure whether she was describing me, herself, or the situation. I started to apologize but she didn’t hear me. She stubbed out her cigarette on the wall, not caring about the mark it left. “You know, because I haven’t been out working, I’m a bit short on the rent and fifty bucks would really help. I mean, I did help out with your story so there should be something in return.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t have fifty bucks.”

  “Twenty, then. Even twenty would help out.” She leaned closer to me, the scared teenager completely gone. “I’ll give you a blow job. You’re not a cop so it would be okay.”

  I sighed, pulled out my wallet, and gave her the twenty. I passed on her offer of a blow job.

  16

  I was walking back to the car, furiously writing notes about my interview with Jackie, when a voice said, “I knew you weren’t a cop,” and I was shoved forward and slammed to the ground. My knees connected with the concrete with a bash of pain to my legs and a shudder so hard that blood spurted out of my mouth as a few of my molars bit into my tongue. I was hit again on the back, this time with something harder, the heel of a boot or a rock that cracked my shoulder, knocked the wind out of my lungs, and drove my head forward to bash into the side panel of my car. There was a blast of light from the collision and then I fell into a well of darkness.

  Sometime later, a year, a week, a second, I awoke into the light, a hazy and painful light that jabbed at my head and felt as if it had scraped the top layer of skin from my body. I had a few friends who suffered from migraines and they had told about the agony that light could cause; I now understood them. I couldn’t breathe and first thought it had to do with my injuries and that over time the ability would come back.

  There was also something heavy on my chest, and as my vision slowly began to refocus on the real world, I realized that the weight came from a knee pressing against my chest. Jackie’s neighbor was putting his entire weight on that knee as he leaned forward, his face just inches from mine. Even then I had trouble making him out through the pounding in my head and the haze in my eyes.

  Something flashed in front of my eyes, a mirror, a piece of glass, I wasn’t sure. But it was sharp, I was sure of that because I felt the point of it pressed against my face, like a sting from a wasp.

  “Bet you thought that was funny, didn’t you?” Jackie’s neighbor growled at me, the bitter smell of cheap booze and cigarettes blowing into my face. “Bet you had a big laugh over the crazy neighbor who thought you were a cop, who thought he was about to get arrested or shot for being stupid. Bet you thought that was pretty funny. But nobody’s laughing now, are we, John?” He called me John because that’s what he thought I was, a john doing an in-call visit with Jackie.

  The wasp sting moved away from my face and a second later I felt it against my ribs. “Having trouble breathing?” he hissed. “That’s okay because where you’
re going, you won’t have to worry about breathing. The knife will just slide in nicely and you’ll bleed out like a fucking pig. I know you’d like me to say that it won’t hurt but it will. Bad.”

  I felt the pressure of the knife pressing against my ribs, and even though he had broken the skin, he hadn’t gone deep enough to cause serious injury. Despite the state of my vision and the pain coursing through my body, I knew he was partly bluffing.

  He might have assaulted people, beat them up either in fights or just for fun, but he had not killed anyone. That was a big step that many didn’t take, despite the anger, pain, and horror of their lives. It was a big line to cross, even for those who had a history of violence.

  But this guy was close, he was near the edge, and it wouldn’t take much for him to step over and take me with him. I had to find some way to stop him, and the only thing I could think of in my terrified state was my pants pocket, something that I hadn’t taken out the night before and how that might appease his anger.

  I was still unable to breathe and that worked in my favor because it made me move my hand slowly toward my pocket. He didn’t even notice until my hand was all the way in. And when he did, he pressed more of his weight against my chest, something cracked, and a flare of pain burst through me. He added more by twisting the knife. But he didn’t push the blade in deeper, he only made the wound slightly bigger.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he screamed. “Are you stupid enough that you want to die now?” He grabbed my wrist with his other hand and yanked it out.

  The bills fluttered in the air and it took a second for my assailant to realize what they were and why I had put my hand in my pocket. Then the weight slowly eased off my chest and the knife pulled away from my body. In that second, I gulped several swallows of air and managed to squeeze enough strength in my body to push and roll away.

  I half expected another attack, this one with the knife stabbing in deeper and my life thumping away as my heart pumped the blood out through the wound, but for a few seconds there was nothing. Only the sound of feet scuttling around me as Jackie’s neighbor scurried to gather up the bills from my recent banking escapade.

  I had no idea how much money I had gathered—I never counted—and I wondered if it was enough. Enough that he would leave me alone and let me live, I hoped.

  I crawled toward my car, the vehicle now a sanctuary instead of just a means of transportation. And every inch I crawled brought an anthology of agony—my head hammered with every double beat of my heart, every breath brought a gasp of agony and spit of blood, every scrape across the concrete brought a sandpapering across my skin and a torment of bones and joints bruised and cracked by the attack. But still I moved on because I had no choice.

  Even with my offhanded bribe, every second I spent near Jackie’s neighbor would make it more difficult to escape. I had almost made it to the car, when I felt a knee slam against my back. My head snapped forward but I was lucky; it didn’t hit the sidewalk. With my hands pulling me forward, my head connected with my right forearm and it provided a cushion from the cement. It wasn’t much of a cushion—there was still a blast of light and pain as I connected—but it was much better than the skull making direct contact with the ground. I figured I had, at the very least, a concussion, but there was a good chance that I didn’t have a permanent, or fatal, head injury.

  The knee in the back hurt like hell, but the fact that I was still able to breathe told me that Jackie’s neighbor had accepted my offer. He wouldn’t kill me, but that didn’t mean I would be let off easy. “You’re lucky I need the money, asshole,” he whispered in my ear. “But if I see your ugly face around this neighborhood again, John, I will fucking kill you. Make no mistake about that. I will kill you.”

  The knee left and I was able to take deeper breaths again, although each one was punctuated with a sharp pain. I made no move to crawl away, because I knew it was over. He had to get his final shots in. A few seconds later, a boot connected with my right thigh and then another shot between the legs. Pain detonated in my groin, and surged and shuddered through my body like the eruption of a volcano against a peaceful and unsuspecting countryside. I retched several times before my stomach emptied itself of its contents. I faded in and out of the dark and light.

  17

  There was tapping, like a bird on a window. And there was a voice, distant, as if someone was talking to himself in the apartment next door. I first thought I was back at my place, sleeping in my bed. It was spring, the birds picking at the anthill that encircled the house and the students upstairs worried about upcoming exams. But then the sounds rose in volume until the tapping became a slap of a hand on glass and the voice was a polite demand.

  “Are you okay, sir? Are you okay?”

  The vision of my tiny yet warm place disappeared and as I woke, the memories of the attack flew back, along with reminders of pain in all the parts of my body. My head spun and my stomach protested, retching, but with nothing there, it became just a series of painful spasms. It lasted either a week or only a few seconds, and in that time, I realized that I was no longer on hard cold concrete but on something softer.

  Like a drunk coming off a bender, I opened and closed my eyes several times, shaking my head to clear the haze that had settled over me. The tactic worked a little bit, and in the clouded clarity of the moment, I realized that somehow, after the light and dark after the attack, I had managed to get into my car. Or maybe some kind Samaritan had helped me up off the ground and deposited me in it.

  I liked the idea of that; the concept of a kind passerby, maybe a witness to the attack, coming to my aid and giving refuge out of the cold air. But then I quickly dismissed the vision. I wasn’t in the best of neighborhoods, and though the people who lived here were no more good or evil than those who lived in other places, there was more of a sense of desperation here. No one would probably do me more harm but if anybody did anything to help, they would make a call instead of actually coming over.

  I had somehow managed to climb into my car on my own, my body instinctively knowing that an unconscious person in a car garners more respect that an unconscious person lying on the sidewalk.

  It took barely a second for me to go through all those thoughts in my head, and a second later, I turned to see who was calling me. The act of just turning my head made the world spin again but I shut my eyes for a second, held the stomach under control, and then took another look. It was a cop, a young cop by the looks of it because his uniform didn’t seem to fit right. And now that I was moving, albeit slowly, the sense of urgency had faded from his voice.

  “Sir? Are you okay, sir? Do you need any assistance? Would you like me to call you an ambulance?”

  I must have looked pretty bad if an ambulance was being offered, but that was the last thing I wanted. Calling an ambulance would force me to make a trip to a hospital to get my injuries assessed, and I didn’t want to delay getting back to the office.

  With Jackie’s comments, I had all that I needed to write the story about Grace, her life and what people thought about her, and I wanted to get that into the paper as soon as possible.

  I also wanted to check into the information about a yellow pickup and about more prostitutes being murdered. I probably had nothing but I needed to keep the positive momentum of my career going.

  I shook my head, believing that I wasn’t as bad off as I really was. “I’m okay, I’m okay. I don’t need an ambulance.” That’s what I meant to say but it probably came out muddled and slurred because he offered the ambulance again. “Are you sure? To be honest, sir, I don’t think you are thinking clearly. I should call you an ambulance.”

  I did not want an ambulance, and to make my point clearly, I decided to step out of the car and tell the nice constable in person. That would show him. I sat up and pulled on the handle to open the back door, but even those simple tasks brought waves of pain, nausea, and more flashes of light into black and back again. I fell against the open door and wo
uld have cracked my head on the cement if not for the quickness of the young constable. He dropped to one knee and, as if I was a little baby falling out of the crib, caught my head in one hand and the back of my neck in the other. He then slowly lowered me to the ground, supporting my head and neck all the way. After he set me down and ensured I was still alive and okay to be released for a second, he made the call.

  * * *

  A doctor shone several lights in my eyes, bright painful stabs of pain followed, and then he wrote a few comments on a chart. “Can you hear me”—he looked at the chart—“Mr. Desroches?” He pronounced the name incorrectly, saying the s and using three syllables instead of two.

  I nodded, but that wasn’t enough.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Desroches, but I need an audible response. Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, I can hear you,” I said, not being able to resist being a smart-ass. “Can you hear me?”

  The doctor smiled. “That’s good, Mr. Desroches. A sense of humor is a good thing, considering what you’ve been through. I understand the police will be wanting to talk to you, but I just wanted to make sure you are aware of your situation before you undertake any strenuous activity. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, but then a second later, I remembered I was supposed to speak. “I understand, but I have to get back to work.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Desroches. When I said strenuous activity I was talking about things like talking, working, stuff like that. What is it that you do, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  It took me a second to remember, and in that second I also realized that there was more to this question than just the question itself. “You’re testing me, aren’t you? Testing my memory.”

  “Very good, Mr. Desroches. Your cognitive abilities are pretty good, unless you were a leading expert in quantum physics or one of the great thinkers of our time, in which case I’d say your cognitive abilities have diminished. But I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.”